Free Collateral Trade by Candace Smith Page A

and Janella were both tall, and they used every inch of their long stride to move down the corridor and make it to the lab with a few seconds to spare.
    “Did you really put in for Navigation again?” Janella asked.
    “Yes, they were presenting it two days ago, but I haven’t heard anything.” Sharell was bored with the test tubes and constant failures of her attempts in the lab. She was not alone. No one seemed to be having success with new variants of nutrients, and the plants in second tier looked pathetic. Dr. Terar hinted that first tier was doing well. They were banned from the experienced scientists’ nursery, or they would have seen that the brainiacks’ plants were almost as pitiful.
    After shift, they walked back to their room. It was originally two large closets for the cabins on each side, but with the extra crew Sharell removed the wall, sealed the doors, and made an entrance to the corridor. They knew they were lucky. Most of the ‘extra payload’ had to live in dorms built in the cafeteria, meeting rooms, and extra supply rooms popping up as they ran out of things.
    Janella dropped onto her mattress. They each had a thin pad on the floor on opposite sides of the space, and other than an original closet rod they were the only furnishings. For two years, this had been their private world. They had to use the communal women’s showers and facilities at the end of the corridor.
    Bitching was non-existent, or at least not spoken out loud. Security clearly defined no allowances for any hearing or higher power to complain to. Few people screwed up, and the rest learned it resulted in demotion to worse living circumstances. There were also crewmembers that went sort of nuts and were confined in a room off the shuttlebay. One had been there for over a year, and Manny had given up his weekly meetings with them.
    One thing was damn sure: they were not going home again. The two women tried to make the best of the situation and hoped they would find a planet or something soon. Anything to get off the ship.
    “Matt was caught in a supply closet with Tammy.”
    Sharell winced with the burst of memory. He had been the last man she had been with the night before the launch. She continued to stare blankly at her reading tablet. “And?” She felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach and an automatic spasm through regions below.
    “He was demoted out of Maintenance to Textile Supply, and Tammy was sent to the other side of the ship. She’s not allowed to cross over without an escort, and her Medic pass was pulled. I heard she was demoted to Cleaning.”
    “No shit?”
    “It’s a stupid rule. Why don’t they just slip birth control into the food or something?” Janella suggested.
    “They say they don’t know the long term affects with the artificial atmosphere, and they don’t want everyone sterilized. King Poopah won’t have anyone to rule when we land if no one can have kids.” Most of this was rumor, because none of her friends without fancy college degrees knew the difference between a real and an artificial atmosphere. As far as they were concerned, air was air… unless, as infrequently happened, a gas line broke or a lab bug escaped.
    “We’re twenty five years old and about the youngest on this tank. If they don’t start letting us have babies, there’s going to be a bunch of old people left.”
    Sharell thought of the Chairman’s expression again. “I’m telling you, Janella, something big is happening.” Everything inside of her warned her to run or hide. On the ship, it was impossible.
    Two weeks later, Jerome perused the initial evaluation lists. It was a beginning, but they still needed to cut five hundred names. Janella and Sharell, as nursery researches with no glimpse of success at a breakthrough, did not pass the first evaluation.
    Something big was happening. In less than a month, their dinner would be laced with a drug that would stop their hearts while they slept. Evaluees that